As Louis C.K. continues his comeback tour—recently stepping up from unplanned appearances at marquee comedy clubs in New York to scheduled sets—controversy has circled the comic yet again. There is, of course, the specter of whether it’s appropriate for Louis to begin headlining at comedy clubs again; it’s been a…

Yup, Dave Chappelle went there. In his new Netflix comedy special, The Bird Revelation, Chappelle touches on sexual harassment in Hollywood and in comedy, mining the accusations against fellow comedian Louis C.K., who was accused of masturbating in front of female colleagues, for joke fodder. The special debuted on…

As the year comes to a close, The Root takes a look back at those who took an L. We aren’t talking the kind of loss you feel sympathy for—or the kind of losses you point a finger and laugh at or shake your head in shame and secondhand embarrassment. Let’s review everyone—and everything—that caught an extreme loss in…

The one thing I keep coming back to when thinking about Louis C.K. now isn’t the bizarre and abusive sexual habits revealed, in detail, last week by the New York Times—repeated forms of sexual misconduct that confirm the long-standing rumors about him and validate platforms such as Gawker, which first reported on this…

Wow. Before we get into Tiffany Haddish’s epic takedown of Louis C.K., the comedian who loved to whip his dick out on women through the years, let’s talk about the fact that after more than 40 seasons on the air, Saturday Night Live had, in Haddish, its first black female comedian to host the show.

This week, while scrolling through Twitter, I ran across a video of author, explainer of blackness, and one of my picks to send in our delegation when the aliens arrive and ask black America to “take us to your leader,” Ta-Nehisi Coates.